On February 3, the Florida Secretary of State released a report on the November 2016 election that, among other things, shows that more than 83,000 Florida voters cast a write-in for President for someone who wasn’t a declared presidential write-in candidate. This figure is not part of the Florida Official Canvass of Votes, and there will be no breakdown as to who received these votes. See this story.
It is likely that Evan McMullin received a fair number of those votes. The Florida deadline for filing for write-in status is in July, an absurdly early deadline. McMullin didn’t declare his candidacy until August 2016 so his write-ins could not be tallied. The July deadline is just one of many silly laws that injured McMullin, yet, sadly, he didn’t file any court challenges to any of these laws. Thanks to Michael Drucker for the link.
He didn’t file to challenge those laws because he doesn’t want them changed. He was a shill candidate for the republican party for those that didn’t like Trump. He was a joke of a candidate and took attention away from actual third party candidates
I voted for McMullin because: 1) I did not want Trump, Clinton, Johnson, Stein, or Castle to appoint Supreme Court Justices, and 2) I liked what McMullin said about his plan for appointing Supreme Court Justices.
Imagine that Mark, you voted for the candidate you found most favorable of the candidates running. I just shake my head at all of the convoluted reasons people give for who they are voting for. Every race I look at all of the candidates and vote the one I prefer the most, regardless of if they are Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, CP candidates, independents, or any other third party candidate. I wish every voter did the same.
Is there a list available as to which candidates received these write in votes and how many each of them got?
No, none of these candidates filed to be declared write-in candidates, so no one will ever know, unless some historian or other researcher visits each county elections office and begs to see whatever record the county kept, or until someone like that wins permission to look at the ballots themselves, which would be an overwhelming task. But in 2001 the big news organizations were permitted to see all the Florida ballots and recount the presidential vote, so it must be legal to make them public.